


Different

by Stacig



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Male Friendship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacig/pseuds/Stacig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney always thought that no one understood him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2005.

Rodney had worked with a lot of other scientists throughout his career. Most of them had been so unremarkable that they didn’t warrant his remembering them. A distressing number of them had been completely incompetent at anything beyond reciting whatever they had learned at the so-called university they had attended. They were unimaginative, focused on advancing their careers without regard to the science of the work, or just plain stupid. A very few of them had been good at what they did, brilliant even, although never anywhere near his level of genius. None of them had been anything like Radek Zelenka.

It had surprised Rodney at first because Radek was so *unassuming*, blending into the background until his genius was needed and even then willing to let the team take the credit for his work. It would have been easy to ignore him entirely, except for one thing. Radek was completely unwilling to put up with any of Rodney’s bluster. There weren’t many people willing to tell Rodney to shut up and get over himself; there were fewer that Rodney actually listened to. 

Radek was an engineer from Area 51 who had been transferred onto the Atlantis project just before they had left Earth. He’d spent the previous three years reverse engineering downed Goa’uld ships and had been the lead engineer on the Prometheus project. Before that Radek had spent ten years working for the Russian space program. His transfer to the Atlantis project had been touch and go, Area 51 had wanted him to work on the Daedalus project and had fought hard for him to stay, but had finally been approved a week before the expedition left. Rodney met him for the first time two days before they stepped through the Gate.

The thing that made Radek so different was that he understood Rodney. That is, not only did he understand what Rodney was saying almost all the time, which 99.9% of people didn’t, but he seemed to understand Rodney’s need to be better than everyone else, or at least he didn’t care. He rolled his eyes, he told Rodney off, and then he carried on like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. 

Sometimes when they were working, it was as if their brains were connected; Rodney would start a thought and Radek would finish it. A theory would go back and forth between them until neither of them really knew whose idea it had been in the first place. It should have bothered Rodney. It didn’t.

Rodney brought Radek with him to meetings and the two of them sat huddled in front of one computer, explaining to Elizabeth and John and whoever else cared to listen what their brilliant plan for saving the city was this time. Rodney remembered a time when he would have insisted on attending those meetings alone, when he would have resented another person being there, interrupting his ideas and basically being wrong about everything they said. Now he couldn’t imagine not having Radek along to support his ideas.

Rodney had been a lonely child, alienated from his parents, sister and year-mates by gulfs of knowledge and understanding he couldn’t put a name to at the time. Early on, the school system had labeled him as ‘gifted’ and encouraged his parents to move him to an environment more suitable to his abilities. His parents had insisted that he needed a ‘normal’ upbringing and for seven long years, Rodney had braved the Ontario public school system until in grade six his parents could no longer deny that his needs were different than his sister’s and placed him in an accelerated program at a private school two hours drive from their home. Their resentment had been obvious. 

Throughout his teenage years, Rodney had clung to a dream that one day he would meet someone who could truly understand him. But even among his new peers he didn’t fit in. He was often frustrated at their lack of understanding and intuition. He learned to believe that his level of thinking was beyond anyone else. Until now he’d never had any real reason to believe otherwise. Of course, in Rodney’s adolescent dream, the person who understood him had been a beautiful blonde woman. Radek was anything but.

Radek was gay; it had been in his personnel file. Rodney hadn’t bothered to look at it until days after they had arrived in Atlantis. Radek had been one of a very small number of scientists that Rodney hadn’t been involved in hiring for the project. He had been transferred from Area 51, Elizabeth had wanted him, and so Rodney had slipped his file to the bottom of the pile of paperwork that he had already resented.

When Rodney had read that entry under the heading ‘Sexual Orientation’, he’d immediately dug out his black marker and crossed out the line, the same as he had with the rest of his staff files, regardless of what had been entered. Rodney had been two when Trudeau informed Canada, and whoever else might have been listening, that “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.” Just because thirty-seven years later the American government still couldn’t figure that out didn’t mean that Rodney had to deal with it. 

Rodney had caught Radek looking at him more than once. They’d never talked about it and Rodney was more than happy to leave it as it was. It was something of an open secret among the scientists that Radek was seeing Peter Grodin, so whatever Radek was seeing in Rodney was obviously not something he was serious in pursuing. The fact that Rodney found the situation rather flattering was completely beside the point.

Two hours ago, Rodney, Peter and Miller, the pilot Elizabeth had assigned to them, had left Atlantis for the LaGrange point satellite they hoped to be able to activate and use to destroy the three Wraith hive ships bearing down on Atlantis. Radek had wanted to come in Rodney’s place, fearing that something would go wrong and coming to the ‘logical’ conclusion that his loss would be easier for Atlantis to take. Sure, Rodney was indispensable, but after working with Radek for the better part of a year now, he knew the other man was fairly important to the smooth functioning of the city as well. If nothing else, Rodney had field experience while Radek hadn’t been out of the city in the entire time they had been there. So Rodney had told Radek he was in charge of the city while Rodney was away and then headed out for the satellite. 

Peter is sleeping in the back compartment of the Jumper. In an hour they will switch off and Rodney will get the first sleep he’s had in more than two days. The challenges ahead of them are daunting, but for a few hours at least, Rodney figures he’ll be able sleep well knowing that his city is in Radek’s capable hands.


End file.
